Thai Yellow Curry with Beef and Potatoes

Like most recipes in my life, this one starts and ends with the sauce. That velvety rich, fragrant, warming Thai yellow curry sauce with hints of coconut sweetness, flecks of green cilantro, delicate little strings of fresh ginger, punchy turmeric-yellow color, and a decent kick of Thai chile heat. It’s just barely thick enough to be like a creamy curry gravy but still saucy enough to make its way in and around every grain of rice. Perrrrfection.

I would just like to point out that somehow, when I was distracted by the Thai yellow curry sauce, chunks of beef (as in b-e-e-f, like red meat, like the stuff I never hardly ever cook or eat) snuck into my food dreams. What in the what?

Superweird, but no time to question it. MORE CURRY NOW // MORE CURRY NOW // MORE CURRY NOW.

I’ll just start by saying I don’t normally cook recipes that involve a special trip to a special grocery store or require more than 20 minutes of prep. You know that about me.

But I made this recipe for a special occasion last week: my newly started dinner club with friends! And here’s the thing about this Thai yellow curry recipe: it’s 100% from scratch.

Meaning:

you will literally make the curry paste from scratch. like, pulse it all together in your very own food processor or blender.

many readers will now leave this blog.

those of you who don’t will now check off the box for “make curry from scratch” from your foodie bucket list. *cheers and applause*

even if it doesn’t turn out like you were expecting, making a curry from scratch makes you feel like THE MOST AWESOME cook. because you are.

you will be giving yourself the gift of homemade yellow curry paste for at least two more recipes, because as written, you will end up with extra curry paste for later. this might actually be my favorite thing about the recipe.

you might have guessed, and you’d be right – this recipe requires a trip to an Asian grocery store. unless you’re the person whose mainstream grocery store sells shrimp paste and galangal, in which case you are a very lucky duck.

you don’t need to be a really fancy cook to make this – it’s really straightforward and at times it’s even hands-off. you will just need TIME. like, a few hours. save it for a Saturday or divide up each of the steps over a day or two.

And now, a close up shot of the curry paste because I’m a food blogger.

I actually made and photographed another whole recipe during the time that my beef was just simmering away and getting all wonderful in that buttery coconut milk.

And all the multi-taskers rejoiced!

You guys, I can’t even tell you how much fun I had making this for my friends, but really, just making it for me.

Most of my life revolves around food that is quick and easy and I’m always always always looking for shortcuts or ways to save time. So to have a time where I said – hey, look, I’m going to dedicate five hundred days to this just because I love cooking new things and because this is a life experience and because curry somehow runs in my Minnesota veins – was unusually therapeutic for me.

Truthfully? I don’t expect most readers to ever make this. It’s not practical. I totally get that and I almost felt like maybe I shouldn’t post the recipe because it’s such a beast.

BUT. If you love curry. If you love cooking. If you love watching something be created from nothing. And if you can find a few hours here and there over the course of a few days to get this all put together, you and I should probably talk.

Description

Thai Yellow Curry with Beef and Potatoes – made from scratch! Perfect creamy comfort food with huge flavor and a kick of spice.

Scale

Ingredients

For the yellow curry paste

2 shallots

1 head garlic

1 3-inch piece galangal, peeled and thinly sliced*

1 3-inch piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

1 teaspoon roasted ground coriander

20 dried red Thai chiles softened in hot water

2 tablespoons turmeric

2 tablespoons curry powder

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

1 tablespoon shrimp paste*

1 1/2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon lemongrass paste

For the curry

2 lbs. beef chuck, trimmed and cut into cubes

3–4 cups light coconut milk

4 cups water, divided

2 cups coconut cream (canned)*

24 ounces Yukon gold potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 shallot, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1/2 cup minced cilantro

Instructions

CURRY PASTE (one hour): Heat a cast-iron pan over medium high heat. Wrap the garlic and shallots in foil (with their paper on) and place on the skillet for 25 minutes, flipping once half way through. Remove from heat and cool, and roughly chop. Set aside. Layer the ginger and galangal in a single layer and wrap with foil. Place in the skillet and heat for about 10 minutes flipping once halfway through. Place garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and all other ingredients for the curry paste in a blender or food processor. Pulse until mostly smooth. Use water from the chiles to help the mixture run through the blender as needed. This will make a little more than 2 cups – set 3/4 cup aside for this recipe and freeze or refrigerate the rest for later.

BEEF (one hour): Heat the light coconut milk in a deep pot. Add the beef and simmer for 45 minutes. Add 1 cup water and simmer another 15-20 minutes. Set aside; do not drain.

CURRY (one hour): Heat the coconut cream in a deep pot until bubbling and starting to thicken a bit. Add about 3/4 cup curry paste and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, shallots, beef, and 1/2 cup of the reserved coconut milk from step two. Stir in 3 cups water. Simmer for 30-45 minutes until potatoes are tender. Add the sugar, fish sauce, cilantro. Serve over jasmine rice.

Notes

*These ingredients will probably require a trip to an Asian grocery store. It’s worth it if you want to do it right! I would suggest buying 2-3x what you need in case you want to make it again.

As written, I would rate this as mild++.

As written, the recipe is exactly how I made it for my friends. But it felt a little greasy, so when I made it the second time I opted for coconut milk instead of coconut cream. The results were really good other than that it was very very very spicy. I would consider it medium+ if not straight up hot. So if you’re going to sub coconut milk for coconut cream, reduce the amount of curry paste to 1/2 cup or less (you can always add more later if you want).

Did you make this recipe?

PS. I’m anticipating questions about using store bought yellow curry paste, because I wondered the same thing myself. Honestly, I don’t remember the last time (if ever) that I’ve used store bought yellow curry paste so it’s really hard to me to say if that could be used in this recipe with similar results. I think it could? but I make no promises. Please leave a comment if you try it with the store bought paste so others know how to best adjust the recipe.

161 Comments

This looks great – I love curry and I love time-consuming recipes! Something about putting lots of time into a meal and watching it slowly simmer is wonderful to me. I am so thankful that I telework Mondays and Tuesdays so I have more time to put into dinner those days (and scout out shrimp paste and galangal at our fantastic international farmer’s market) 🙂

Lindsay, I am loving that bright yellow color and thai curries are just so amazing and flavorful!
I have been wanting to try making the paste from scratch but could never muster the strength to!! Thanks to you, I will be making this super soon!!

I think it’s absolutely lovely that you took the time to make this dish for your friends. Chances are good that this is pretty much the reason you started with Pinch of Yum in the first place – because spending hours in the kitchen in order to share something beautiful with your friends actually makes you feel so good. I totally agree that it’s easy to get caught in wanting everything to be fast, but sometimes it’s those slow, simmer-y meals that are the most soul-nourishing! Thank you for posting something you personally love!

This recipe is wonderful!!!!! But I had quite the adventure getting it made. First, I could only find fresh Thai chilies, and working with them gave me a major asthma attack. I know to wear rubber gloves when working with hot peppers, but despite those, I ended up with a burn spot on my face where I touched it after taking the gloves off. It ended up being pretty hot (authentically Thai) because I put the full ¾ cup of paste in. Oh, forgot to mention that I made my own lemon grass paste, because all I could get on short notice was fresh lemongrass. I did all that cooking yesterday and we had it for dinner tonight. It was a success, even with my husband (boy has he changed since the first meal I ever cooked for him, which was Thai green curry chicken). I toned down the heat a little by adding some cottage cheese when I served it. The other thing I did was that when I was looking for galangal, I found some of the beautiful green Thai eggplants. So I put those in. A perfect addition. That makes the dish truly a one-pot meal. I am delighted that I can finally have some really good Thai food with a reasonable amount of effort. Thank you very much for posting the recipe.

Post Script: Lindsay, I checked the label of the coconut cream I bought, and it had absolutely no sugar in it. I don’t remember the brand, but I found it at a small Asian market near me. It would probably be worth checking labels to find a better brand.

You’re right! I didn’t research long enough – but just now I found this which explains it. I used coconut cream when I made it the first time, but in my research (and when creating the nutrition label) I was probably accidentally getting info about cream of coconut. Problem solved! http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-coconut-m-75446

I’m so glad you shared this recipe! Even though I enjoy easy meals, I secretly love the more time consuming ones. I made this curry for dinner last night (because sometimes Thursdays need to be exciting too), and it was AWESOME. Like, one of the best things to ever come out of my kitchen. And just to assure your readers, it tastes wonderful even without the shrimp paste, which I couldn’t find, so no need to panic and refuse to make it if the more obscure ingredients are hard to find. Thanks for sharing this one, Lindsay! It was straight up magical.

Okay so you didn’t take my advice and fly to moderately warm coastal breezy Santa Monica for you vacation spot!!! But at least you went to my first and forever-favorite ski town and mt ranges. Food and Fun all wrapped up into one.

I grew up in luke-warm Santa Monica and one of the happiest days of my life was the day I left. One of the things I hated was that it never got either warm or cold. The other point I’d make about vacationing there (and maybe it doesn’t matter to young folks) but the traffic in the greater Los Angeles area – actually all of Southern California – is atrocious. At least for me, that would discourage vacationing there.

I’m making this right now! I subbed anchovies for the shrimp paste because I didn’t have any- still tastes great:) I’m trying a couple of short cuts… Cooking the potatoes in the curry and coconut milk at the same time as the beef (plan to add it for the last 15-30 min. I also cooked the garlic, ginger, galangal, and shallots in a pan with a bit of oil and water until it was tender. It took about 20 minutes.

Hey, Lindsay! You rock! You made curry paste from scratch! Wow! (Sorry lots of !!!s. but they are needed here.) I love curry, but never ever thought of making it from scratch. Adding it to my foodie bucket list. Our closest asian store is 5 hours away, so yeah, it might be a while until I can get my hands on those foreign to me ingredients (galangal and shrimp paste). But I’ll get there and will let you know. Thanks!

A search for yellow curry from scratch brought me here. I was looking for a recipe to make yellow curry paste and I’m glad I’ve found this. I’ve tried making other pastes from scratch like red curry or curry laksa before with success but I just thought a whole head of garlic in your recipe might be a bit too excessive. Are you sure about it?

Hi there! Good question. A head of garlic does seem like a lot, but it works in this recipe. That being said, we do like a lot of garlic here at Pinch of Yum, so if you’re not a big fan of garlic you could certainly decrease the amount to your liking! 🙂

Delicious! Instead of making our own curry paste – we used Mae Ploy yellow curry paste purchased at our local co-op and it worked great. We used a food scale to measure 100 g – and that was enough for a little spice but not too much. The meat is so tender and tasty in this. And – although it takes some time, the steps are actually not that difficult – patience is the most important thing.

I’ve been on a Thai cooking frenzy and this is easily one of the best recipes I’ve made. From Panang, to Drunken Noodles to Red Curry – this knocked my socks off. A definite staple and VERY simply to make. Than you!

Hi, Catharine. Unfortunately since we’ve only ever used dried chilis in this recipe, my suggestion is to taste as you go. Add in fresh chilis until you reach your preferred spice level. Hope you enjoy it!

Spent ~4 hours this Saturday making this recipe — totally worth it! Everything came together really nicely in the end. I used a recipe for a curry powder from a Vietnamese family friend that really worked with this recipe. The only thing I did differently was I seared the beef before adding the coconut milk so that the beef had some crispiness on the exterior. Thanks for sharing this beast of a recipe!

Made this last night for my partner and I and WOW! Definitely going to make this again for the future. Lemongrass paste was hard to find so just made my own. You’re right about the salt content for the curry paste but once it’s incorporated with the sweet Cream of Coconut, you can barely taste the salt. By the end, the curry came out so sweet and spicy that I didn’t need to add the fish sauce and sugar. I can’t wait to make this again in the future.